The Winter

AFTER western gales have done Heaved the grey autumnal seas Weakened an anaemic sun Anaesthetised the bees Drained the sap from all the trees Substituted golds for greens Covered summer's murder scenes With a distant roll of drums Winter comes, winter comes.

Like a surgeon to his rounds Down a chilly corridor Taciturn, he beats the bounds Squeaky shoes upon the floor Murmuring behind each screen While the patient pale in bed Strains to overhear what's said Firmly then, but without fuss Winter enters thus.

When the slate is clean at dawn And at first the frost seems light Steaming off each sunlit lawn Like a mistress taking flight From a chamber not yet hers Now the night draws in so early And the north-east wind is surly As the mask begins to slip Winter cracks its whip.

Down the ginnels winter slips Into country towns it knows Paperboys blow fingertips Stood on doorsteps, freezing toes Kicking empty bottles over Setting yappy terriers off Then the cancerous buses cough And it rains in panel pins So a winter day begins Under downlands to the south Where the chalk-hill horses sleep Trains speed from a tunnel mouth Scattering crows and shaking sheep On the windy downs, the dew ponds High above the Pilgrims' Way Keep their icy glaze all day Neolithic farmers knew them; Winter's wading through them.

Whistling near a lonely bandstand Starching leaf mould in the park Greeting in an empty grandstand Spectral sportsmen in the dark But the boating pond is frozen And the punts are put away For some far-off summer day In the brown and broken nettles Winter settles, winter settles.

Yet, it makes its reparations In the rose-gold frosty air Smoky applewood for perfume Worn as if for some affair Mulled in inglenooks with liquor Dalliances suit the season Need we look for any reason? Huddled by a crackling fire Winter kindles such desire Even the imperious City Peers out at the falling snow While alarms shriek out a ditty To deserted streets below: "Wi-wi-wi-wi-we are waiting. With our wilted mistletoe.

Seasonal trading has been slow Will no one invest in kisses? What a waste of money this is."

But the cabs will still be queueing Passing Oxford Street's fantasia And the chestnuts will be doing In nostalgia's golden brazier Time re-screens the past in sepia For the wistful eyes of men Did we not keep Christmas then Better, in our long-lost youth? Only winter knows that truth.

A poem by the Sunday Express poet

Christmas of the past was cosy We forget the days more fraught In the pub the world looks rosy Filtered through a glass of port Red as berries on the holly It's the spirit we recall. Christmas in the Baron's Hall Loud with stories and charades Winter lives on Christmas cards: Coaching inns and horns hallooing Horses, hounds, a stovepipe hat Parcels, puddings, Bishop brewing Was a Christmas ever that? Crone in rags, her faggot bundle Struggling in a snowy lane Here such icons will remain Hung in halls of old Decembers Visions dancing in the embers.

How will winter wear its beauty? Like the widow of an earl Elegantly at her duty Pale as a grieving girl As the snowflakes fall at midnight Cold confetti on her head Ah, the year, the old year's dead Underneath its snowy bier Fields and farmland disappear Sleep delicious, sleep profound Swansdown swathes the woodland floor Summer's somewhere underground Sleeping depths unplumbed before While the spring remains in exile Like a prince, long overseas Not a whisper of a breeze Nor a captain at the helm Can return him to his realm Daylight breaks on snowfall steady.

Silent swirling swarms of bees Hide the huntsman, horse at ready Waiting in a copse of trees Flushed from cover comes the quarry Muted horn, a creature calling Trampled snow, the body falling Winter goes in for the kill Now the conquered land is still.

How does winter end its reign? Like a guest who stays and stays Leaves but then returns again Without notice - and for days Grudgingly, curmudgeonly, In a harsh persistent wind Chillblained feet and broken-skinned Influenza on its breath Winter has a drawn-out death But the earth will wake, the hedges Turn to luminescent green Wildfowl jostles in the sedges While a buttery sun is seen Warming up the frosty furrows Seen through rolling early mist Brandishing a bony fist Winter glowers vainly back Melting on the muddy track.